MANSFIELD: The Hammer Finally Drops

In announcing that the Department of Justice (DOJ) will enter into a consent decree with the City of Cleveland, Attorney General Eric Holder provides Cleveland residents with their best hope to change how policing is carried out in the city. If Cleveland wants to once again become a world-class city, everyone (including cops) needs to embrace the scathing report issued by the DOJ  — but, unfortunately, that’s probably not going to happen. It’s not difficult to imagine members of the Police Patrolmen’s Association (PPA) huddled together, scheming on how to deflect criticism and circumvent any potential changes.

A consent decree, essentially, is an agreement or settlement to resolve a dispute between two parties without admission of guilt by either side. The plaintiff (the DOJ) and the defendant (the City of Cleveland) ask the federal court to enter into their agreement, maintain supervision — via a monitor — over the lifespan of the implementation of the decree. However, since the members of the police union see themselves as answerable to no one but brothers in blue, its leaders could care less what kind of agreement the mayor agrees to enter into with the DOJ.

In a six-page letter to Mayor Jackson the DOJ states that it “has completed its civil pattern or practice investigation of the Cleveland Division of Police (CDP or ‘the Division’). We have concluded that we have reasonable cause to believe that CDP engages in a pattern or practice of the use of excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. We have determined that structural and systemic deficiencies and practices—including insufficient accountability, inadequate training, ineffective policies, and inadequate engagement with the community—contribute to the use of unreasonable force.” No surprises there.

Nonetheless, police in a few cities, most notably Seattle, dug their heels in and used lawsuits in an attempt to fight off any changes in regards to how they’ve operated for years, and they did so with tooth and claw. There’s a real chance the police union here will engage in a similar court action.

The 124-page consent decree foisted on New Orleans could serve as a template for what the DOJ will be seeking to accomplish in Cleveland, since the complaints from residents in both cities are strikingly similar — indeed, as are complaints from other cities around the country.

However, as Holder and his Acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Vanita Gupta both stated, the DOJ cannot complete the task of bringing the CPD to heel without input and assistance from Clevelanders. And this is as it should be. While the cavalry has finally arrived, we now have to rally our own troops to do their part in bringing about change.

Gupta announced the DOJ would be conducting candid conversations with — and seeking input from — local residents during this process (which, in other cities has taken up to a decade to complete), and local activists need to be ready with reasoned and workable solutions, since a better time to have our suggestions implemented will never present itself. It’s now or never.

When Lyndon Johnson signed the historic Civil Right Bill on July 2, 1964, he supposedly said privately that he knew by the stroke of his pen he was about to divide the country in half: and he was right. Publicly, he turned to Martin Luther King and said, “Now you go back out into the streets and make me enforce this new law.”

What Johnson knew was that words on paper are never enough. Racism has a way of lying dormant, like a snake hiding in the grass — sometimes for years or decades — simply waiting for the right moment to attempt to roll back any gains minorities make. No one in their right mind should expect the members of the PPA to simply roll over and play dead — it ain’t that kinda party. They’ll simply wait for the DOJ to pack up its bags and leave town.

That’s why systemic, structural changes to the CDP have to be implemented and inculcated into the culture … if they are to last.

One idea of many that activists are giving voice to is to put an initiative on the ballot to create an elected Civilian Review Committee, one with real teeth, the ability to issue subpoenas and have punishment powers. In other words, we’d have to change the way cases of cop misconduct are investigated and processed … thus bypassing the grand jury system, which in both Ferguson and New York proved to be deeply flawed.

The beauty of a real Civilian Review Committee is that it puts power back into the hands of the people who are being policed, and what could be wrong with that? Additionally, until and unless there are real sanctions in place for cops who operate outside their legal authority, those so inclined to bend or break the law will continue to do so with impunity.

Holder said during his remarks that the process of reform would not be easy, and he wasn’t lying. As Frederick Douglass said “… power cedes nothing without a demand, it never did and it never will. We must agitate, agitate, agitate.”

[Photo: Andrew Bardwell (Flickr)]

From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.

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